As we think about the future of the software industry, we believe we have a responsibility to help build a better future – a more sustainable future – both within our organizations and in partnership with other industry leaders. With data centers around the world estimated to account for up to 3% of global electricity usage, a figure set to rise as digitization continues, it’s imperative we address this as an industry.
In May 2021, Thoughtworks co-founded the Green Software Foundation, along with Microsoft, Github and Accenture to establish best practices - standards and approaches - for building green software. Our mission is to build a trusted ecosystem of people, standards, tooling and best practices for green software.
In 2022, the Green Software Foundation grew to 40 member organizations and delivered some exciting and high-impact projects:
Hosted the Green Software Foundation global summit, with events in 14 countries, bringing together technologists in diverse roles and from diverse organizations to talk about the challenges and opportunities in greening the software sector
Launched a hackathon, CarbonHack 22, with an inspiring number of participants and projects bringing their ideas to create the carbon aware applications using our Carbon Aware SDK
Created an online, open-source consolidated database of green software patterns categorized by fields of engineering, technology and domain
Launched a speakers bureau
Released the first green software practitioners training course for all technologists, focused on establishing foundational skills
Published version 1.0 of our Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) standard that allows technologists to measure and improve the carbon footprint of their software
Lastly, we hosted a Decarbonize Software event, coinciding with COP27, to promote the most relevant developments in green computing, ensuring that we got sustainable IT onto the organization’s agenda for climate action
For more information about the Green Software Foundation, you can visit their website or read the 2022 annual report